Sandro Sticca

September 27, 2013

Sandro Sticca, professor of French and comparative literature, is the author of a recently published book: From Prehistory to History: Abruzzo and its Cultural Heritage. History, Art, Literature (Rome, Fall, 2013). After considering the millenary origins and development of the Abruzzo region from its pre-historical to historical beginnings proper, the book discusses Abruzzo’s art and literature, both secular and religious, from the Roman period to contemporary times, in a chronological excursus which offers insights into such Abruzzese figures as the Latin writers Ovid and Sallust; religious people as Popes Innocent VII, Celestin V, St. John of Capestrano; humanists such as Quatrario and Barbato of Sulmona, friend of Petrarch and Boccaccio; painters such as Delitio, Cola dell’Amatrice, the Palizzi Brothers, Michetti, Patini, Barbella and Cascella; writers such as Gabriele Rossetti, father of the British artists Dante Gabriele, William and Christina Rossetti, D’Annunzio, Croce, Pomilio, Silone, Manna and Bonanni; historians such as Anton Ludovico Antinori, Massonio , Febonio and Faraglia; and musicians such as Bellini, Tosti, knighted in 1908 by King Edward VII (1841-1910) for his work as professor of music with London’s Royal Academy of Music, and Gaetano Braga, “singing master” at the Court of Queen Victoria (1819-1901). The volume ends with a consideration of famous British writers and painters, such as Edward Lear, Richard Keppel Craven, Estella Canziani and Anne Macdonell, who visited and depicted Abruzzo in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.